[App Fridays] Canword, a multitasking app for news and social media addicts

Reading articles from various sources, closely following different trends, and sharing interesting content with our friends is something most of us like to do. But because of the various hassles involved such as visiting different websites and news sources, logging into our social media profiles and then sharing it, most of us tend to avoid it. Canword aims to solve this pain point and make our news reading experience more social and enjoyable.

What is it about?

Canword is an OmniReader enabled news curator that gets all-inclusive feed of stories and news in your interest areas. The categories include Art, Bollywood, Breaking News, Design, Finance, Fitness, Food, Gaming, Photography, Politics, Sports, Startups and Technology. It is available in Android and iOS. According to the Founders, all stories that you see in Canword are specifically tailored to be relevant to the user’s geographical location.

Features

Streams – Read the latest from every field

Users have to select different streams based on their interests. The app will then present the most happening stories to users from the top publishers in the world.

Complete stories and articles

Unlike other readers, Canword always brings the user the complete story, rather than just a short excerpt from it.

Journal: Like a story enough to keep it? Or in a hurry and can’t finish it?

Journal is a very useful read-it-later tool. Any article you save to your Journal will be easily accessible at all times and will continue to exist even if the original article is removed by the publisher. Canword lets you create custom folders in your Journal, making it easy to organise your stuff efficiently.

Social Networks: Stories from all over the world, even your friends and family

User can connect their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts to bring all their social feeds to Canword. All usual activities like commenting, liking, sharing and posting can be performed from right within the app.

Logging in is as easy as a single tap to connect with the user’s Facebook account. Everything is synced through their servers, which fetch the latest content from around the world every 5 minutes.

The team behind it

It is co-founded by Harscelle Goenka(right), a 3rd year IT Engineering dropout from RKNEC Nagpur, and Vivek Yadav(left), a 3rd year Aerospace Engineering dropout from IIT Madras.

They are planning to incorporate unobtrusive and engaging advertisements in the app once they get good initial traction. Their focus would be native ads, indistinguishable from the stories themselves and not banners and popups.

For those who do not want to see ads in the app, they will have a yearly subscription of USD 3 per year through in-app purchase that will remove ads for the duration of the subscription period.

They are at present self-funded, but are looking for investment to take their initiative ahead.

The founders take the quality of their content very seriously. They also stated that they are the only OmniReader app that automatically detects the users location and gives them appropriate stories that are interesting and relevant.They are also updating the content at a furious pace, and refresh their content database every 5 minutes. They designed the Canword reading experience to be extremely intuitive, swift and pleasurable.

Pros and Cons

The user interface of the app is really smooth and I did not face any lags over Wifi or 3G. The UX is good as well, with all the in-app features placed at intuitive and convenient locations.

From my experience I found that the founders’ claims were true, and fresh content was fetched every 5 minutes. Also the Journal where articles can be saved and read later, even offline, was a welcome feature.

The location specific feature is not applicable to all categories. Some streams that are global, like Fitness, Art, Design, Technology etc. are not curated geographically. Adding more location specific news sources will really improve the appeal of the app.

YS verdict

On the whole I really liked the app. The sheer volume of articles and also the social media options in-built in the app make it a must try option for anybody who wants a unique and fun news reading experience.